The Guardian Newspaper, a major UK news organisation, has published an article reporting on the increasing pressure for the UK Jehovah’s Witnesses to undergo official investigation for their failure to deal with internal accusations and instances of child abuse.

The article, by journalist Sarah Marsh, reports that IICSA (Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse) which is the official UK Government investigation into institutional responses to child sex abuse, has been contacted by a significant number of survivors of sex abuse inside the Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as a number of Members of UK Parliament.

However, since this indication, pressure on IICSA has clearly been growing, not only from a sizeable number of survivors of abuse inside the religion coming forward to tell their story, but from other quarters as well.

Alex Chalk, Conservative MP for Cheltenham, is quoted as saying;

“I am waiting to hear back from IICSA and depending on what they say, I am planning to raise the issue in parliament and seek a backbench debate on it. I am not prepared to see this rest, not least because if we are going to drain the swamp it would be a huge missed opportunity not to deal with this [the Jehovah Witness abuse allegations] at same time of other aspects … it would be regrettable unfinished business.”

“The Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to recognise the issue of child abuse in their organisation or to create robust safeguarding procedures to protect children. An investigation by IICSA into the Jehovah’s Witnesses is an opportunity for the inquiry to effect real change in an organisation that refuses to shine a light on child abuse and protect children.”

I strongly recommend the article as it gives a detailed breakdown of the growing swell of public and political concern surrounding the conduct of The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society in this area.

However, this is not all.

The Guardian launches a call to arms over JW Child Sex Abuse.

The Guardian have launched a site for survivors of JW child sex abuse in the UK to share their experiences.

You can do this anonymously if you so wish.

The paper is clearly looking to carry out a major expose of Watchtower and build public awareness of this issue; the kind of public awareness that would cause IICSA to add the Jehovah’s Witnesses to its investigation, and cause the UK Parliament to debate the problem.

This is achievable.

Similar media exposure and public pressure in the Netherlands is currently causing the Dutch government to urgently investigate Watchtower, as we reported earlier, in part thanks to the efforts of brave survivors telling their stories through the Reclaimed Voices foundation. The same can be accomplished in the UK.

Again, the site is here. Please share it far and wide, and if you are a survivor of abuse in the UK, please carefully consider if this is something you feel is suitable for you. Know that whatever you decide to do is the right decision, but if you feel that you would like to tell your story, be assured that the Guardian is a very reputable and trusted news organisation with a huge reach, and will handle your story in a responsible and ethical way.

Awww, why all butthurt, guy(s)? Someone burst your little bubble?
Wa waa waaa. Give the babies some wetnaps.
That’s right guys, can you feel the walls closing in? I can feel YOU feeling IT.
Can you now see there’s no place to hide?

Your demeanor seems quite weak. Is it sexist to ask if you are female? You come off like a female that’s been picked on by men. It’s okay honey, no one will hurt you here.

How is it possible for you to burst my bubble? That’s a delusion of grandeur. It’s a no go like a defective rocket that tried to make it to the moon but never got past Earth’s atmosphere. Try as you will, it cannot happen. But commenting like you often do I can cite your venom and distaste for the Bible as fulfillment of Bible prophecy in our day. “Poison of asps is on their tongue,” is how Paul wrote it. The more vehemently you lose control, the more you fulfill those prophecies concerning people who do, and who wish, to smite Christians. You fell into this trap, so how do you suppose to get out of it now, now that you’ve are drawn back into revealing your real character?

Talking about a hot kitchen? A weak personality thinks that way. Sorry, but you hurt no one here with your thoughts. Sorry you’ve been beat up on in the past. As an antidote to your condition I suggest reading the Bible book of John. It’s my favorite, and it might help you. You might find Christ’s love there. He loves more than me. So listening to him you should find more soothing than listening to me.

I find it interesting you think someone wants to hide from you. You’ve read my past posts. Haven’t you observed my style yet? It’s a very simple style with a very simplistic tactic attached to it. Here, I’ll help you understand it. All I have to do is point out the fallacies in your arguments. I really don’t even need to offer new points. It’s very easy to point out the shortcomings of your points, since those arguments are put together so illogically, or rather so unconvincingly.

Maybe in the process of these discussions even if you don’t accept God you’ll learn better how to reason, and present convincing arguments. Right now when you’re not playing it safe relating points about WT, that all here are already aware of, you offer nothing of any substance, opinions but no substance. Your not sharing any convincing deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, or abduction. And worst of all you’re not sharing any evidence. Quoting some dead scientist’s belief about religion is futile. Don’t expect to assimilate any converts (like the Borg in sci fi movies) with that type of approach. You’ll only influence those already assimilated to your side to give a hi five. But that’s about as far as you’ll get.

Here, let me show you why. President Jimmy Carter admitted that as a Christian he has, “committed sin in his heart.” Okay you read that. Now are you ready to accept God. He was the president of the United States. Does that move you?

I haven’t read your posts very carefully. You might be good at correcting grammar. I don’t like editing. So you can be my editor if you wish.

messenger, do you see the point in prophecies? If a lot of people follow Christ, that’s a fulfilment. If only a few follow, that’s also a fulfillment. If people on the other hand attack Christians, that’s a fulfillment also.
win win always
Cheers

Look, messenger….I don’t really mean to upset you so what say I give you a chance to be 100% correct in your beliefs with no room for argument. You believe the bible is the infallible word of an infallible god, right? And you consider yourself a true believer and that you’ve even been contacted by god and you see it as your moral duty to persuade people to what you consider is the truth. How about coming around to my place tonight and down this 2 litre bottle of bleach and if I wake in the morning to the smell of pancakes and find you in the kitchen all bright eyed and bushy tailed having already been for a run, I’ll be off to the Kingdom Hall quicker than you can say ‘and here’s the contribution box’. John 16 17-18 say’s that true believers can drink poison and suffer no ill effects. Are we on?

Oh, come on , Markie……this is the only place in the world that messenger can come for some honest feedback. It’s refreshing for him because the position he’s in out there in the world is full of people deferring to him and that gives him a wonky view. Messenger knows that the key to a successful life is knowing oneself, and he’s right into that sort of thing.
But anyway, you seem like a reasonable guy and I agree with what you say about the WT haven’t too much money to fail completely. If we look at the Scientologists with somewhere around 60,000 tithed members, I’m sure the WT could condense down to that many faithful sheeple who would lovingly take a pill if instructed and be thankful for having the pants tithed off them. Trouble is, Gods horse has gone lame and the rest of the field is gaining after being allowed to dine on a diet of truth instead of lies and threats for so long, so it’s anybody’s guess.

you’ve misunderstood my words messenger but at the same time proved my point. Thanks for that. My point was that it’s fundamentalists who think we want to be hedonistic. We don’t. This belief helps fundamentalists to view the world as wicked and so furthers their end times belief. Fundamentalists never look for truth. All they look for is constant confirmation that what they believe is right. Not very academic at all and that’s why they fail. Constantly.

You yourself show symptoms of what I term Sign Anxiety. An exaggeration of sign anxiety is when a believer is so wound up about his beliefs that if an ant farts somewhere in the Amazon, he thinks thats god trumpeting the tribulation and starts running around in circles yelling ‘Armageddon. Do you see liars everywhere, messenger? Do you see hate towards christians everywhere? Sign Anxiety giving you an unrealistic view of the world. Religion is well known to cause delusions and mania in the less robust of minds because of the constant trying to square belief with reality. It doesn’t work and some people can’t handle the strain. Do you have a toe over the line?

You and a lot of those I’ve had debates with if anything are funny to me, you’d say a joke in you’re lingo. The only reason, and this is the only reason I don’t absolutely view you like that is because I know you’re going to pay the ultimate price for your desires. And let’s get it straight, it is your desires, not beliefs.

Anyway this is what’s so intellectually ridiculous about your comments, and comments like this come from many sources on this site. Here we go with a couple examples:

Hey buddy, even though the site rules states rule #? is to respect the opinions of others, reality is, no one, and I mean no one really cares about your opinion. So to grow up and get out of that 3rd grade mentality.

Here’s another example of your type of comment:

“Messenger I see your upset.”

Haven’t you figured out yet that despite any comment I make about your comment you cannot upset me. Because like I’ve said in my first example, I like everyone else, don’t care about your opinions.

Here’s another, and this one tells me as a teacher you should have tried harder in school. I know intrinsic intelligence separates people, but if you stood in my position you’d realize the tremendous number of butt sitters out there. Butt sitting probably impacts intellectual ability more than inborn intelligence. So, here’s this example:

So, and so said,” bla bla bla bla” and you and I know he’s smarter than us, so we both should respect his opinion.

No outandabout, I know he’s smarter than you. There may be some people smarter than me, but I haven’t been around them. I don’t respect anyone’s opinion because you think he’s smart or others think he’s smart. I assess the opinions of others, that’s it. If I agree, I agree; if I don’t I don’t. With me its as simple as that. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize talent in people. I do. But I don’t heap a lot of respect to that talent. That person is a person, I’m a person. And someone you think is smart might make a comment I think is stupid, and I might not even consider that one smart. I only judge what I know about, not what I heard about second hand. I don’t know that much about your dead scientist. Though I probably know as much as you do about him, which is essentially nothing. I’ve read some of his papers, saw a movie about him, seen a few aired presentations he was featured in, heard comments, you know trivial stuff like that. But I don’t know enough to assess his intelligence. Oh, while here, let’s point this out. In the past I heard Fred Franz was considered a genius. If you follow opinions follow Fred Franz. He’ll take you back to WT.

I realize this comment is somewhat contradictory because in it I do what I claim makes your posts weak….in other words rather than present evidence to make a point I talk about you as a personality. Oh, but at least I refer to the evidence in your past post to make this point, so it’s not exactly what you usually do just throwing some opinion out there. Some examples from you, “I doubt Mr Strobel was ever an atheist, I think he just said that to get money from book sales.; My point was that it’s fundamentalists who think we want to be hedonistic (first you group all people you call fundamentalist together stating they have a belief about you, fact is most of them aren’t thinking about you very much at all unless your actions cross their actions like on this site), so many examples of this type of comment from you, and that Resister even more.

And finally this type of quote, “You yourself show symptoms of what I term Sign Anxiety.” That’s the type that’s most likely to cost you your life, because you have no proofs that support any of the points you claim are important to you. Where actual proof exists that counter your beliefs you don’t accept those as proof, because you don’t want to believe. And because you don’t want to believe real truth that is right in front of you and has been for most of your life then you look for other explanations you feel make your world safe (e.g, explanations like analyzing similarities and differences between organisms and stating those prove Christ’s message was a fraud).

Logically that’s like saying because people discovered molecules Christ’s message must be a fraud. There is no correlation between the points you make.

Let me back track a bit. I’m not looking it back up, but your famous scientist’s quote went something like ( religion teaches hope or belief or some such word, and science teaches truth with proof, so science will win). I believe your quote was similar. I view the quote as idiotic. Religion or rather God represented through religion has furnished proof. The fact that you don’t accept that is irrelevant, maybe he doesn’t want you to accept it because he knows things about you now and later. What science does not have is the presence of God. Religion has that, and God’s presence has revealed proof.

I do understand the position you’re in. Nevertheless I also believe if I were in that position I’d play my hand a little better even though it’s a loser. Because facts exist that prove God’s points to those that will accept those facts as truth. I can just sit back and take one of two approaches. I can pick out the fallacy in your arguments because no facts exist to prove your points. In other words you have no points you can prove, just suppositions you call factual- but those are not.

Or I can point out the facts that confirm my points. You’re only response to this second approach is to say, “I don’t believe it.” But outandabout old buddy. I don’t primarily write for you, even when I’m writing to you. If you don’t believe it’s okay for me.

Ha ha, good on ya messenger and thanks. It’s been a while since a received a diatribe as entertaining as that. Just like the good old day’s aye? I was beginning to think you didn’t care. By the way, it wasn’t actually me that wrote some of those things you mentioned, but hey.

So the bleach evening is a no go? I guess that proves that you don’t think gods word is infallible and that you’re not a true believer after all. So how much more of gods infallible word needs weeding out of the bible to make it a palatable belief system? Just protecting my family, man.

But listen, if god is so powerful, why doesn’t he just kill Satan. Why must we always be afraid about demons in the letterbox, Satan under the bed and Apostates behind the curtains. Are you aware that this sounds like a classic children’s good versus evil fairy tale.

Why are you afraid of those things? I’m not. I’m not afraid of apostates, I’m not afraid of the Devil. And I haven’t read scriptures suggesting I exist in a state of fear because of them.

As to why God doesn’t just kill Satan. A simple answer, because he does what he wants when he wants, just like we do. That’s like me asking you, why don’t you follow God? Who can give an absolutely accurate answer, you or me? That’s like tranquillo asking me to explain why God did something he object to. If it is not stated in the Bible we can only surmise.

But based on Bible stories and comments in it, it’s probably because he’s allowing rebels and non-rebels to understand the consequences of rebellion, experience being a powerful teacher. “The one teaching you to benefit yourself.” (Isaiah) Satan isn’t the main problem. Each individual rebel is more of a problem for us. You know, like a terrorist might be in your midst? Who would you worry more about Satan, or that terrorist? And that includes all rebellious people. Kill Satan and the world stays the same. Part of the answer too is Satan doesn’t pose a problem for God. All things are in his control and working out according to his arrangements. Satan will be separated from his follower in time.

To answer, its also possible God won’t kill Satan. That’s a WT teaching. The thought is not present in the scripture’s literal word meanings. WT puts its reasoning on top of a lot of scriptures while claiming the Bible teaches their thoughts (e.g. no smoking, no military service, no voting, regular field service, all other denominations worship the Devil, no holidays, no birthdays, no allegiance to governments, the Devil does not live forever in Hell, etc.-none of those ideas are taught in a literal interpretation of scripture)

Interpreting the scriptures literally means Satan stays alive forever, placed where he has no contact with God’s followers. He might just give Satan what he wants, which is an existence without the restrictions following God’s rule imposes. Something you want too. If that happens the Bible prophesies claim that world degenerates and never becomes the place you envision.